Loathsome nanny-state mayor’s latest initiative: Loud earbuds

posted at 2:21 pm on March 6, 2013 by Erika Johnsen

Listen up, New Yorkers: Your local government is here to educate you about the dangers of listening to your iPod too loud. Whatever would you do without them? The NY Post reports:

Mayor Bloomberg — who has already cracked down on smoking, junk food, trans fats, salt and super-sized drinks — is embarking on a new crusade: preventing New Yorkers from going deaf.

Hizzoner’s health officials are planning a social-media campaign to warn young people about the risk of losing their hearing from listening to music at high volume on personal MP3 players, The Post has learned.

“With public and private support, a public-education campaign is being developed to raise awareness about safe use of personal music players . . . and risks of loud and long listening,” said Nancy Clark, the city Health Department’s assistant commissioner of environmental-disease prevention.

The campaign, which will cost $250,000, is being financed through a grant received from the Fund for Public Health, the Health Department’s fund-raising arm.

No laws or regulations or anything in the works for this one (for now), it’s more in the way of a public-awareness campaign, but come on. There are a billion and one different things in this world that are hazardous to our health — is it really any government’s job to try and save us from ourselves on every single one of them, especially when it means that there are government employees being paid with tax dollars whose jobs are even partially dedicated to that kind of thing. Mayor Bloomberg has managed to double New York City’s debt to $110 billion in a decade (and according to him, this is with the federal government providing for 10-12 percent of the city’s budget), but it certainly sounds like there are a few bureaucrats they can afford to shave off…

I suppose this is local government, and New Yorkers keep on voting for the guy; if these are the type of functions the city’s voters really want, then that’s that — but why they do will never cease to baffle me.

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This one won’t catch on, because most of the people in the music industry — unlike the gun, soda, food, cigarette or automobile industries previously attacked by Bloomberg — are perceived as liberals. Attacking them even indirectly by attacking loud music on iPods will get the same reaction as Tipper Gore’s attacks on song lyrics.

Mayor Mike can protest, but the same types who were willing to climb aboard the other nanny state ban bandwagons aren’t buying tickets for this trip.

Dear Nanny Bloomberg, should I wash behind my ears at night? What about the dust bunnies under my bed? Speaking of bed, what time should I go to bed at night? I’m only 48 years old with a BA, JD and MLS degrees, I need lots of help in making day to day decisions.

I would recommend New York City residents to introduce new hemp rope regulation. Don’t bother asking for the Mayor’s approval. just suggest it to him, in a way he won’t be able to refuse. While you do, use the opportunity to remind Mr. Bloomberg that his bodyguards’ guns are tools of murder and violence that must be disposed of immediately.

As I wrote in the headline thread, I guess the midget Stalin is going to try to ban rock concerts, now. Can’t have that sort of serious health hazard being openly available to the public in the big city …

Eh, can’t get too worked up about this, although I don’t see why schools can’t provide this info to students for…free. Incorporate the lesson into “health” and/or science lessons. Unless he does try to ban them then, yeah, MAKE IT STOP! But to compare this particular initiative to Stalin, Cloward-Piven is ridiculous hyperbole.

jon1979 on March 6, 2013 at 2:28 PM

Actually, I work for a major record label during the Tipper Gore kerfuffle and the fact is the labels were viciously opposed to her initiative.

Those things are dangerous because people walk into to traffic not realizing how much they use their ears to navigate city streets, and of course you can’t hear the mugger coming up behind you either. But it’s still none of Bloomburg’s business.

The whole point of these things is to listen to the music I want at the volume I want. Fortunately, in more ways than one, I don’t live in NY. I guess if I ever visit I’ll get an old school boom box and walk around blasting Cannibal Corpse and Vader at full volume. Maybe that will remind people why we went to Walkmans in the first place.